Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid was one of two Liberal ministers to sign a cabinet order Monday reclassifying some members of the nursing profession. She admitted the move, opposed by six health authorities, could add $10 million in costs to the health care system every year.

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VICTORIA -- As the clock ticked down on the election call this week, the B.C. Liberals signed off on one last decision, ignoring warnings from within their own government that it was expensive, rushed and potentially disruptive.

Cabinet order 222 was approved Monday, less than 24 hours before the issuing of the election writs and the day when by long-standing practice government assumes a caretaker role for the duration of the four-week campaign.

Signed on behalf of the whole cabinet by ministers Margaret MacDiarmid and Pat Bell, the order enacted a reclassification of some members of the nursing profession, to the benefit of the nurses’ union and to the detriment of other public sector unions.

MacDiarmid admitted that the change could add $10 million in costs to the health care system every year, because the reclassified nurses would be in line for premium pay, additional allowances, and other financial perks.

She and her colleagues acted in defiance of key players in health, including the collective leadership of the six authorities that administer the system and deliver many of the health services in the province.

“We are concerned that this is a very rushed process,” wrote the six authority presidents in a confidential letter to the government earlier this month. “We believe that extensive consultation must take place to avoid some unintended result which would severely compromise the provision of effective and efficient care and in fact not be in our patients’ best interest.”

The letter was passed to my colleague Jonathan Fowlie, who reported it on the front page of The Vancouver Sun. The April 9 story prompted one of the Liberals to remark with apparent bitterness that the leaders of the health authorities should simply copy their correspondence to Fowlie, eliminating the need for leaks.

Despite the bad publicity, the Liberals brushed aside concerns about lack of consultation and proclaimed the reorganization a week later.

The measure had its roots in the successful drive by the B.C. Nurses’ Union to recruit more than 7,000 licensed practical nurses who were members of the rival Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU)

The raid left those nurses isolated in a contract bargaining unit dominated by the interests of other, not especially sympathetic, public sector unions. In an effort to complete the transition, the Liberals last month brought in legislation to absorb the stranded nurses into a structure dominated by the nurses’ union.

But they did so without respecting the court-mandated obligation to consult with the other unions that would be affected by the arbitrary reclassification of a significant portion of their membership.

“They have to be consulted (and) ideally the consultation would have happened ahead of time,” MacDiarmid conceded to me during an interview on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV a few days after the legislation was introduced.

“However, legislation like this can be tabled, and the consultation can happen afterwards.”

Only it did not happen afterwards, leastways not to the extent necessary.

The government passed the bill through the house on the final day of the truncated pre-election session, including a provision that it would be proclaimed into law by cabinet order at a later date. But as March gave way to April, the affected unions were still complaining, in much the same vein as the aforementioned letter from the health authorities, about the lack of due process.

When the Liberals did proclaim the measure onto law on Monday, they tried to provide cover on the consultation front by including a one-year transition period to the new nursing regime.

“While we recognize there may be some costs associated with this change,” said MacDiarmid, “we feel there are also benefits to the health care system — as having all nurses bargain together for a single, provincial collective agreement will help optimize the use of health care resources. It will also allow a team-based approach to care and focus on competencies and scope rather than union, political, or labour relations perspectives.”

The rationale had even Liberal insiders wondering why their government rushed to get this done at the last possible opportunity. The answer was provided by the nurses’ union, in the person of its formidable leader, Debra McPherson.

“The nurses are watching,” she declared last week. “Certainly you would have thousands of nurses who would be very upset with a party who promises, through legislation, to deliver them into a new bargaining association — something they’ve worked for, for over a decade — and then doesn’t deliver on the final last step.”

Disdained by the New Democrats because of the raid on the rival, NDP-allied Hospital Employees’ Union, the nurses’ union saw the Liberals as its last hope to get this done.

And the Liberals concluded there might be some votes in it for them if they complied, never mind ignoring the concerns of the health regions, trampling due process, and saddling the system with costs that extend well beyond the current election year.

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The projected five-year cost of the forest policy announced by the NDP this week is $310 million, not $100 million as I wrote Wednesday. I misread a reference to the plan to “increase funding by $100 million,” phased in over “the next five years.”

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